Briefly

ERCOT Reverts uth Percentile to Prior Level
ERCOT is reverting the "uth" percentile used to determine exposure for Point-to-Point (PTP) Obligation Bids in the Day Ahead Market (DAM) to the 90th percentile starting with the DAM run on February 9, 2011, for Operating Day February 10, 2011. As previously noted, the "uth" percentile had been lowered to the 80th percentile due to last week's unusual activity.

ERCOT Urging Conservation, No "Immediate" Concerns for Outages
ERCOT has urged customers to conserve power for the rest of the week, particularly from 6 a.m. - 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.- 8 p.m. local time, to help reduce the risk of electricity emergencies or the need for rotating outages in the face of more arctic weather. The grid continues to have about 2,700 MW of generation capacity unavailable because of unplanned or forced outages, although ERCOT had "no immediate concerns" for the possibility of rotating outages Wednesday morning. ERCOT is forecasting a new winter peak of more than 58,000 MW between 7 a.m. - 8 a.m. on Thursday.

FirstEnergy Solutions Signs PPA with Iberdrola Renewables
FirstEnergy Solutions announced that it will purchase 100 MW of output from the 304-MW Blue Creek Wind Farm, which is being built in western Ohio by Iberdrola Renewables, under a 20-year PPA beginning in October of 2012. In the region, FirstEnergy Solutions has 476 MW of wind power under long-term contracts and 451 MW of pumped-storage hydro-power facilities.